On this one you should be safe; the round-trip time to India via fiber is almost 200ms, which is fine for reading CT scans, but dangerous for high-precision control of manipulators. Doesn't mean someone won't do it, since there's nothing someone won't try to sell that's a little cheaper and a lot worse, but not in my chest cavity.

Now once the surgical robots are more than glorified waldoes, things get more interesting...

I'm not really all that pessimist about the robots taking over, a welfare state or a police state. The labor market will change and so will the skills of the workers. As Seven Of Nine says: We will adapt.

This (total) transition will take place in a far distant future. Are we sure earth will last that long, anyway?

Google may be taking a left turn into acquiisition of robotics companies and automation systems but could its vast datacenters be the ultimate home of these metal marvels? Here's what you might encournter, courtesy of virtualization and cloud solutions architect Bill Kleyman. Bill recently toured a robotics factory and in this short video, offers a glimpse of what the next-generation datacenter might look like..

Bezos "absolved himself of responsibility" for what exactly? For creating a hugely successful business that drives other companies out of business? Companies have been doing that to other companies for generations. Does Bezos now need to apologize for doing that? As Bezos said on the 60 Minutes segment, Amazon and the Internet aren't driving certain companies out of business. The future is. Progress is.

As is typical with these people who became billionaires with many technoligies we really never needed. Soon to be proven as the mom and pops, local farmers and artisans retake main street and leave these drones to their own future seperate from the real world which is soon upon us. Quite possible they can use them to find their own unnatural planet which would be a perfect fit. I wonder how they think making these billions was so easy when that was never the way of the natural world and the past billionaires who actually earned theri money without an IPO. I bet they will be shocked in the next decade when their world seprates from the natural one,,,,and it will! Johnnygreenseed

In the future we will all lounge around in floating seats while robots bring us cold beverages. Humans can spend their time being creative when we're free of the drudgery of things like cleaning bathrooms and assembling drones.

Technological change this vast will need an equally dramatic adjustment in the economic model.

If a surgical robot can be controlled nine feet away, it's practical to control it from 9,000 miles away.

On the one hand, that's great for patients in areas without skilled surgeons. But what happens when hospitals in developed countries discover how much cheaper they can do surgery when the surgeon is from a state... or country... with lower labor rates?

Watch surgery end up outsourced, just like radiology.

The lawyers who make the laws ensure that only their own field is secure from offshore outsourcing. There's no reason they'll protect the medical field.

I think that is great advice to be giving anyone. Generally speaking and in my view, I think economics and technology are the same things. It's like the chicken and the egg. Technology began during the 1st industrial revolution and so did the study of resource allocation etc. Everything that the world has currently i.e. education standard, products, standard of living and human rights! Etc is all thanks to the industrial revolution.

Some say that we are in our 5th industrial revolution due to cloud computing, IOT, drone deliveries (pizza with extra toppings, I wonder if it's polite to tip a drone) and robots etc, either way, 5th or 1st industrial revolution, the problems are inevitable not because of technology or economics but because of resources. As things such as global oil reserves etc are not infinite, unfortunately.

Fortunately, economic growth is infinite, Tim Worstall from the Adam Smith Institute in London explains this point nicely herefor example, a carburetor car is driving a distance of 10 miles per gallon and it is changed with a hybrid car that is now driving at 20 miles per gallon, economic growth has just happened without increasing gas input, and yes gas prices have gone up as a result. The only way where economic growth could be limited is if either we don't desire it or Zeno's paradoxes come into play.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.